NCSE Evolution Education Update for 2009/06/12

Dear Friends of NCSE,
A new resource on NCSE's website provides the details on seventeen key
legal cases in the creationism/evolution controversy. A new issue of
Evolution: Education and Outreach is available. And the text of
Science's recent interview of Eugenie C. Scott is now posted in NCSE's
website.

"CREATIONISM AND THE LAW"
Looking for the legal skinny on the court cases that shaped the
landscape of the creationism/evolution controversy? NCSE's new
Creationism and the Law resource provides the details on seventeen key
cases, from Scopes to Selman, that made a difference. Simply click on
the name of a case to get a thorough summary; a list of source
documents (typically PDFs, arranged in chronological order); and to
relevant NCSE news stories, timelines, and presentations; and a
selection of links to third-party sources. This new NCSE resource is
free and aimed at journalists, lawyers, school administrators, school
boards, and anyone interested in the legal history of evolution,
creationism, and public school science education.
For "Creationism and the Law," visit:
http://ncseweb.org/creationism/legal/creationism-law
THE LATEST ISSUE OF EVOLUTION: EDUCATION AND OUTREACH
The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach -- the new
journal aspiring to promote accurate understanding and comprehensive
teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience -- is now
available on-line. Taking transitional forms as its theme, the issue
positively teems with exciting paleontology. Among the authors are
Jennifer A. Clack writing on "The Fish-Tetrapod Transition: New
Fossils and Interpretations," Luis M. Chiappe writing on "Downsized
Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary Transition to Modern Birds," Kenneth D.
Angielczyk writing on "Dimetrodon Is Not a Dinosaur: Using Tree
Thinking to Understand the Ancient Relatives of Mammals and their
Evolution," J. G. M. Thewissen, Lisa Noelle Cooper, John C. George,
and Sunil Bajpai writing on "From Land to Water: the Origin of Whales,
Dolphins, and Porpoises," and Donald R. Prothero writing on
"Evolutionary Transitions in the Fossil Record of Terrestrial Hoofed
Mammals."
Also included is the latest installment of NCSE's regular column for
Evolution: Education and Outreach, Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution
Education. In "Transforming Our Thinking about Transitional Forms,"
NCSE's Education Project Director Louise S. Mead explains, "A common
misconception of evolutionary biology is that it involves a search for
'missing links' in the history of life. Relying on this misconception,
antievolutionists present the supposed absence of transitional forms
from the fossil record as evidence against evolution. Students of
biology need to understand that evolution is a branching process,
paleontologists do not expect to find 'missing links,' and
evolutionary research uses independent lines of evidence to test
hypotheses and make conclusions about the history of life. Teachers
can facilitate such learning by incorporating cladistics and
tree-thinking into the curriculum and using evograms to focus on
important evolutionary transitions."
For the latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach, visit:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/120878/
For Mead's article, visit:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/501371w1h0h58385/fulltext.html
EUGENIE C. SCOTT INTERVIEWED IN SCIENCE (NOW WITH FULL TEXT)
Last week's Evolution Education Update summarized Science's interview
with NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott. Now, with the kind
permission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
the complete text of the interview is available on NCSE's website.
For the interview, visit:
http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/06/eugenie-c-scott-interviewed-science-004823
Thanks for reading! And don't forget to visit NCSE's website --
http://ncseweb.org -- where you can always find the latest news on
evolution education and threats to it.
--
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x310
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncseweb.orghttp://ncseweb.org
Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism -- now in its second edition!
http://ncseweb.org/evc
Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools
http://ncseweb.org/nioc
NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today!
http://ncseweb.org/membership

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Antievolutionists Say the Darndest Things

Antievolutionists often express outrage over alleged incivility from those who oppose their efforts to evade the establishment clause of the First Amendment. But they have no difficulty in dishing out the abuse themselves. Here is a sample from the Invidious Comparisons thread that documents egregious behavior on the part of the religious antievolution advocates.

IDC advocate Jonathan Wells:

These critics include embryologists, paleontologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, medical doctors, philosophers, and even lawyers. Unfortunately, the North American science-and-religion establishment has largely turned a deaf ear to these critics, preferring instead to abandon classical theology and embrace metaphysical materialism and moral relativism. But I see the situation as analogous to the last years of Soviet communism. A small, powerful elite controls all the official information outlets while the evidence against the official position swells quietly, like a wave building offshore. Someday soon, to the surprise of many people in academia and the media, the wave will break. I predict that the Darwinist establishment will come apart at the seams, just as the Soviet Empire did in 1990.